Skarsgard has emerged as Yates’ top choice to play Tarzan in the pic. No offer has been made and the project still has to go before the studio’s greenlight committee, but Yates is one of WB’s top directors so if they sign off on the Skarsgard casting then pre-production will likely get underway early next year. The project’s script has been worked on by a number of scribes including John August, Cormac and Marianne Wibberley, and most recently Adam Cozad, and this iteration of the story picks up years after Tarzan has been assimilated into society.

The film finds the assimilated Tarzan “asked by Queen Victoria to investigate the goings-on in the Congo. Tarzan teams with an ex-mercenary named George Washington Williams to save the Congo from a fierce warlord who controls a massive diamond mine.” Variety adds that Samuel L. Jackson is being eyed to play the Williams character, a Civil War veteran who’s “eager to redeem himself for his part in the massacre of Native Americans.”